(1) Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a brain data analysis system and, more specifically, to a mobile in vivo infra red brain scan system that is configured to collect remote and mobile data of brain activity for real-time analysis.
(2) Description of Related Art
Historically, human-brain dysfunctions have been diagnosed by psychiatric and psychological professionals in terms of behavioral characteristics. This approach to diagnoses catalogs the incidences of observed behavior in statistical correspondence to those listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM). Better known as the DSM-IV-TR, the manual is published by the American Psychiatric Association and covers all mental health disorders for both children and adults. It also lists known causes of these disorders, statistics in terms of gender, age at onset, and prognosis as well as some research concerning optimal treatment approaches. The Manual is re-published about every five years. It establishes standard definitions of pathologic behavior but, over the years, often substantially changes the definitions of abnormal vs. normal behavior.
Therapies carried out by professional clinicians range from permanent institutionalization through in-patient hospital treatment to various, out-patient behavior modification techniques. Often, psychiatric physicians prescribe chemical drug therapies in order to modify or manage symptomatic behavior. These drugs are meant to alter neuro-chemical activity in the brain. Validation of the efficacy of these drug treatments is, however, still observational. Although these clinicians may carry out a protocol of pre- and post-therapy blood tests to ascertain metabolic balances juxtaposed against behavioral changes, the diagnoses are still observational and subjective. This approach to diagnosis defines the “Subjective versus Objective Problem.” What is needed is a more scientific approach to diagnosis than observation-based determinations.
It is generally recognized that upwards of 80 percent of all neuro-scientists have existed only in the past 30 years. It has only been within the past 15 years that sophisticated brain imaging techniques have been invented and used in attempts to inform researchers and clinicians about brain activity versus behavior. The discovery of “brain waves” is attributed to Richard Canton, an English researcher in the year 1875. Electro-Encephalography (EEG) as a technique for detecting brain activity in humans and is attributed to Hans Berger in the year 1929. Modern brain imaging techniques date from the mid-1970's, with the advent of Magnetic Resonance imaging (MRI). The current state-of-the-art for brain imaging is called function Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).
Imaging (fMRI) combines the sum of constructs of evoked potential events (at the bundled synapses level) with the static images of an MRI image. However, fMRI is not a mobile, physical activity related, real-time diagnostic tool. In other words, while fMRI provides data related to sight, sound, and some thought, it confines the user to a large machine and does not provide for brain analysis while moving. Thus, current fMRI techniques do not provide for an analysis during the range of human behaviors, particularly for children and adults with serious behavioral or mental problems.
The overwhelming complexity of the mammalian brain, juxtaposed against the current (noninvasive) state-of-the-art in brain imaging, associated with scientifically characterizing various brain activities, still defines the “Objective versus Subjective Problem.” Thus, what occurs in the brain from a physiological and chemical point of view, relating to active physical and psychological behavior, is still largely unknown. The reason for most of the imprecise diagnoses is due to “The Subjective versus Objective Problem.”
The substantial overlap of observed behaviors, characterized in the List of Clinical Syndromes, Developmental, and Personality Disorders in the DSM, is legion. It is estimated by some researchers that more than 25 percent of the World's population suffers from mental/emotional problems. It is also estimated that 47 percent of those requiring interventional mental care do not receive it. More than 28 percent of the Member Nations of the World Health Organization do not have budget items for mental health. Even in countries like the United States of America, the statistics seem ineluctable. Most of the mentally disabled do not receive effective intervention therapies due to well-recognized and closely related problems, such as poverty, lack of medical insurance coverage, and inaccurate diagnoses.
Currently, scientific studies relating to the brain take place primarily in university departments of medicine, biology, psychology, engineering, information science, philosophy, and (interestingly) music. The wide range of these academic research interests is beginning to generate a growing amount of much needed, interdisciplinary research and data sharing.
In addition to the need to more precisely define the standardized diagnoses cataloged in the DSM, there is a need to study the neuronal activity of the brain in real-time as it responds to a wide range of internal and external stimuli (as described further below). There is a need, for instance, to study the impact of psychological and physical trauma on the developing brain. Additionally, there is a need for brain studies of high-risk job candidates, such as astronauts to qualify them for space flight as well as astronauts working in outer space. Further, there is an urgent need to study the possible causes and results of a broad range of Autistic Spectrum Disorders in adults and children.
The central and peripheral nervous systems are marvelous detector systems for sensing minuscule changes in the external environment in which the human body exists. In many respects, the human auditory, visual, and olfactory systems are far more sensitive than our most sensitive detector instruments. Indeed, the human eye can detect changes of a single photon! The olfactory bulbs and auditory processing systems in the brain are similarly sensitive. However, the integration and processing times, necessary to become consciously aware of these sensory inputs, is often dangerously long. This is because our own, “experiential training,” inhibits the conscious compilation of these data in the prefrontal cortex, which is where they are first evaluated against memorized experiences in frontal cortex and then sent back to other parts of the brain to “take action.”
This is why external stimuli (such as potentially dangerous sights, sounds, smells, movements, skin pressure) and all of the other external somatosensory inputs, as well as dysfunctional internal sensory stimuli (such as an irregular heartbeat, breathing, blood pressure, planar orientation, gravity etc., carried by the proprioceptive nervous system) are largely “ignored,” until it is consciously decided that they have become too critical. Humans cannot detect (at the conscious level) most of these “early warning signals.” Humans have learned, over millions of years, to ignore many of these minute stimuli in favor of adapting to or modifying the surrounding environment. This may explain why animals are far more sensitive to external stimuli; because they have not learned to ignore or modify environmental change like humans (e.g., the recent tragic tsunami events in the Far East, where all of the indigenous animals ran inland long before the first tsunami hit the beaches).
Thus, when things begin to “go wrong” on Earth or in Outer Space, they often start as a small anomaly; like the distant, imperceptible roar of sounds in the sea (a precursor to a tsunami), or a low frequency, slowly moving ground wave (a precursor of an earthquake), or the small reduction in pressure on the human skin (like the beginning of a crack/leak in a space suit). All of these small anomalies induce subtle neuronal changes, which the Central Nervous System (CNS) will detect and record long before the Earth bound or spacecraft instruments or commercial environmental safety systems, calibrated to “acceptable ranges,” detect such dangerous stimuli.
Therefore, in addition to the reasons listed above for detecting and monitoring psychological conditions, there is an urgent need to detect and accurately identify, in real-time, brain related physiological anomalies and disabilities.